UBC Blogroll

Voting about news about voting to support voting

October 27, 2008

Welcome VFM voters! If you are a UBC student and you are passionate about democracy (which I assume is why you are reading this blog) you should check out an interesting initiative being run by Mark Latham called the VoterMedia Awards (VoterMedia.org). The idea is to support local information sources, media sites, blogs, that deal with democracy and voting. VoterMedia does this by allowing readers to vote, what else!, about their favourite news source. Money is then apportioned proportionally based on how people voted. This creates a healthy atmosphere of competition between sites and provides financial support for grassroots efforts to improve our democracy.

So it goes without saying that FairVoteUBC is all about the VFM. We have just been added to the contest, which is counted every Thursday. If you are a UBC student go the the VFM site for more info on how to vote. It uses your CWL and WebCT to let you securely vote. Your votes get used over multiple weeks to count towards the sites so every vote counts. Don’t you wish our political system was like that?

This is a great way to support democracy and local news sources. And in the non-stop election season that we are all in now its good to keep these issues at the forefront of people’s minds. What’s that, you think you’re done with voting now that the federal election is over? Oh, nonono. Just a heads of the democratic smorgashborg that is still before us

the US election is like, any day now. I know, this doesn’t count because we can’t vote. But its democracy in action, and it things play out as they seem they will, then it provides hope that seemingly impossible electoral results are in fact possible.

The Vancouver municipal election – this is coming up soon on November 15. If you live in Vancouver or one of the cities around it this should be on your mind. We will have an article soon about the horrible system that Vancouver currently uses to count votes.

Regional municipal elections – if you live on UBC campus or anywhere in the University Endowment Lands you hopefully know already that you can’t vote in the Vancouver election. (Yes, we’re not really in Vancouver, that’s why we’ve got the mounties) But you can still vote, for a regional councillor on the Metro Vancouver board. Check out the metro vancouver site for more info, this voting guide is especially helpful.

BC Provincial Election – This happens next May 12 and you should start seeing signs oh about November 16… Obviously the provincial election is important, but may not require constant attention for the next 6 months. But the referendum on STV is perhaps even more important as it will influence the future of BC democracy and arguably Canadian democracy as well.

Liberals – oh, just as a bonus, they’ll be picking a new leader in the next few months as well, so, that’s something to keep you awake at night.

So the point it, read these blogs, all of them, vote in the VFM to support them, and get involved. The next 6 months are an important time for democracy in North America and this is no time to take a rest. I promise, you can have a nap in June 🙂

So just one more question you say? What would we do with the money? Good question. We are a group of people committed to making proportional voting the way Canada votes. The first step towards that, is getting people, especially UBC students, to get out and vote on May 12, 2009 and vote Yes to BC-STV. So money will all go towards printing posters, flyers, paying for ads in papers, money for food and drinks to get people out to events that raise awareness, STV t-shirts? Frankly, we don’t have lot of costs. So, this little contest can make a big difference for us for what costs we do have.